Effects of chemicals at different levels of biological organization: from the individual to the ecosystem level.

Paul Van den Brink is a professor at the Aquatic Ecology and Water Quality Management Group of Wageningen University and a senior scientist at the research institute Wageningen Environmental Research. At Wageningen University Paul chairs the chemical stress ecology group which currently consists of himself and 11 PhD students. He is involved in supervising and executing international projects on assessing the ecological effects of contaminants like pesticides, veterinary medicines and personal and home care products as well as those of multiple stressors, including drought, nutrients and salinization. Other research topics are the development of effect models (e.g. individual based, meta-population models and ecoinformatics, expert base models), Traits based Ecological Risk Assessment (TERA) and ecological risk assessment of chemicals in the tropics. Since 1995, Paul has published over 275 ISI-listed papers with a citation of > 8600 (h-index = 47), for three of which he won an international prize. He also co-edited five books. Paul currently coordinates the EU funded Integrative Training Network ECORISK2050 which studies the effects of global change on the emission, fate, effects and risks of chemicals in aquatic ecosystems. In 2006 Paul won the LRI-SETAC Innovative Science Award. He also organized and took part in many international workshops and courses. Paul is presently a WIMEK board member which is part of the SENSE research school (www.sense.nl), an associate fellow of the Canadian River Institute, an honorary visiting professor at the University of York and a visiting professor at the South China Normal University. He is also a past-president of SETAC (Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry; www.setac.org) World and Europe and a SETAC Fellow.